Rama Revealed

11

“So the octospiders have never ‘done anything hostile?” Max was saying angrily. “Then what the hell do you call this? We’re fucking trapped.” He shook his head vigorously. “I thought it was stupid to come here in the first place.”

“Please, Max,” Eponine said. “Let’s not argue. Fighting among ourselves is not going to help.”

All the adults except Nai and Benjy had trekked the one kilometer down the passageway to the cathedral room to examine what the octospiders had done. The humans were indeed sealed inside the lair. Two of the three open tunnels leading out of the chamber went to the vertical corridor and the third, they quickly discovered, led to a large, empty storeroom from which there was no exit.

“Well, we’d better think of something fast,” Max said. “We have only four days worth of food and absolutely no idea where to get any more.”

“I’m sorry, Max,” Nicole said, “but I still think Richard’s initial decision was correct. If we had stayed in our lair, we would have been captured and taken back to New Eden, where we almost certainly would have been executed.”

“Maybe,” Max interrupted. “And maybe not. At least in that case the children would have been spared. And I don’t think either Benjy or the doctor would have been killed.”

“This is all academic,” Richard said, “and doesn’t deal with our main problem, which is, what do we do now?”

“All right, genius,” Max said with a sting in his voice. “This has been your show so far. What do you suggest?”

Again Eponine interceded. “You’re being unfair, Max. It’s not Richard’s fault we’re in this predicament. And as I said before, it doesn’t help.”

“Okay, okay,” Max said. He walked toward the passage that led to the storeroom. “I’m going in this tunnel to calm down and to smoke a cigarette.” He glanced back at Eponine. “Do you want to share? We have exactly twenty-nine left after we smoke this one.”

Eponine smiled faintly at Nicole and Ellie. “He’s still pissed off at me for not taking all our cigarettes when we evacuated the lair,” she said quietly. “Don’t worry. Max has a bad temper, but he gets over it fast. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“What is your plan, darling?” Nicole said to Richard a few seconds after Max and Eponine had left.

“We don’t have much choice,” Richard said grimly. “A bare minimum number of adults should stay with Benjy, the children, and the avians, while the rest of us explore this lair as quickly as possible. I have a hard time believing that the octospiders really intend for us to starve to death.”

“Excuse me, Richard,” Robert Turner now said, speaking for the first time since Patrick had reported that the exit to New York was sealed, “but aren’t you again assuming that the octospiders are friendly? Suppose they’re not, or more likely in my opinion, suppose our survival is insignificant to them one way or the other, and that they simply sealed off this lair to protect themselves from all the humans who have recently appeared…”

Robert stopped, apparently having lost his train of thought. “What I was trying to say,” he continued a few seconds later, “is that the children, including your granddaughter, are in considerable jeopardy-psychological as well as physical, I might add-in our current situation, and I would be against any plan that left them unprotected and vulnerable—”

“You’re right, Robert,” Richard interrupted. “Several adults, including at least one man, must stay with Benjy and the children. In fact, Nai must have her hands full right this minute. Why don’t you, Patrick, and Ellie return to the children now? Nicole and I will wait for Max and Eponine and join you shortly.”

Richard and Nicole were alone after the others departed. “Ellie says that Robert is angry most of the time now,” Nicole said quietly, “but he doesn’t know how to express his anger constructively. He told her he thinks the whole enterprise has been a mistake from the beginning, and he spends hours brooding about it. Ellie says she’s even worried about his stability.”

Richard shook his head. “Maybe it was a mistake,” he said. “Maybe you and I should have lived the rest of our life here alone, I just thought—”

At that moment Max and Eponine came back into the chamber. “I want to apologize,” Max said, extending his hand, “to both of you. I guess I let my fear and frustration get the best of me.”

“Thank you, Max,” Nicole answered. “But an apology really isn’t necessary. It would be ridiculous to assume that this many people could go through an experience like this without any disagreements.”

Everyone was together in the museum. “Let’s review the plan one more time,” Richard said. “The five of us will climb down the spikes and explore the area around the subway platform. We will thoroughly investigate every tunnel we can find. Then, if we have not found any means of escape and the large subway is indeed there waiting, Max, Eponine, Nicole, and I will go on board. At that point Patrick will climb back up and rejoin you here in the museum.”

“Don’t you think having all four of you on the subway is reckless?” Robert asked. “Why not just two of you at first?… What if the subway leaves and never comes back?”

“Time is our enemy, Robert,” Richard answered. “If we weren’t running so low on food, then we could follow a more conservative plan. In that case maybe only two of us would enter the subway. But what if the subway leads to more than one place? Since we have already decided that for safety we will explore only in pairs, it could take us a long time to find the escape route with just a single couple doing the searching.”

There was a protracted silence in the room until Timmy began to jabber at his sister. Nikki wandered over and began to stroke the avian’s velvet underside. “I don’t pretend that I have all the answers,” Richard said. “Nor do I underestimate the seriousness of our situation. But if there is a way out of here-and both Nicole and I believe that there must be-then the sooner we find it, the better.”

“Assuming that all four of you do take the subway,” Patrick now asked, “how long do we wait for you here in the museum?”

“That’s a difficult question,” Richard replied. “You have enough food for four more days, and the plentiful water at the cistern should keep you alive for some period after that… I don’t know, Patrick. I guess you should stay here for at least two or three days. After that, you have to make your own decision. If it is at all possible, one or more of us will return.”

Benjy had been following the conversation with rapt attention. He obviously understood more or less what was happening, for he began to cry softly. Nicole went over to comfort him. “Don’t worry, son,” she said. “Everything is going to be all right.”

The child-man looked up at his mother. “I hope so, Mom-ma,” he said, “but I’m scared.”

Galileo Watanabe suddenly jumped up and ran across the room to where the two rifles were leaning against the wall. “If one of those octospider things comes in here,” he said, touching the closest rifle for a few seconds before Max lifted it free of the boy’s grasp, “then I’ll shoot it. Bang! Bang!”

His shouts caused the avians to shriek and little Nikki to cry. After Ellie wiped away her daughter’s tears, Max and Patrick shouldered the rifles and all five of the explorers said their good-byes. Ellie walked out into the tunnel with them. “I didn’t want to say this in front of the children,” she said, “but what should we do if we see an octospider while you’re gone?”

“Try not to panic,” Richard answered.

“And don’t do anything aggressive,” Nicole added.

“Grab Nikki and run like hell,” Max said with a wink.

Nothing unusual happened while they climbed down the spikes. Just as they had years earlier, the lights at the next lower level always turned on when anyone descending approached an unlit area. All five of the explorers were on the subway platform in less than an hour. “Now we’ll find out if those mysterious vehicles are still operating,” Richard said.

In the center of the circular platform there was a smaller hole, also round and with metal spikes protruding from its sides, that descended deeper into the darkness. On opposite ends of the platform, ninety degrees away to the left and right from where the five of them were standing, two dark tunnels were cut into the rock and metal. One of the tunnels was large, five or six meters from top to bottom, while the opposite tunnel was almost exactly an order of magnitude smaller. When Richard approached to within twenty degrees of the large tunnel, it suddenly became illuminated and its interior could be clearly seen. The tunnel looked like a large sewer pipe back on Earth.

The rest of the exploration party hurried over beside Richard as soon as the first whooshing sound was heard coming from the tunnel. Less than a minute later a subway sped around a distant corner and headed rapidly toward them, stopping with its front end a meter or so shy of where the spiked corridor continued to descend.

The inside of the subway was also illuminated. There were no seats, but there were vertical rods from the ceiling to the floor, scattered in the car in seemingly random fashion. The door slid open about fifteen seconds after the subway arrived. On the opposite side of the platform an identical vehicle, exactly one-tenth as large, pulled up and stopped no more than five seconds later.

Even though Max, Patrick, and Eponine had all heard stories about the two ghost subways many times, actually seeing the vehicles left all three of them full of apprehension. “Are you really serious, my friend?” Max said to Richard after the two men quickly examined the outside of the larger subway. “Do you really intend to board that damn thing if we find no other way out?”

Richard nodded.

“But it could go anywhere,” Max said. “We don’t have the foggiest fucking idea what it is, or who built it, or what the hell it’s doing here. And once we’re on board, we’re completely helpless.”

“That’s right,” Richard said. He smiled wanly. “Max, you have an excellent grasp of our situation.”

Max shook his head. “Well, we’d better find something down in this damn hole, because I don’t know if Eponine and I—”

“All right,” Patrick said, approaching the other two men. “I guess it’s time for the next phase of this operation. Come on, Max, are you ready for some more spike climbing?”

Richard did not have any of his clever robots to place in the smaller subway. He did, however, have in his possession a miniature camera with a crude mobility system that he hoped would weigh enough to activate the smaller subway. “Under any circumstances,” he told the others, “the small tunnel does not provide a possible exit for us. I just want to determine for myself if anything significant has changed during these years. Besides, there does not seem to be any reason, at least not yet, for more than two of us to descend any farther.”

While Max and Patrick were climbing slowly down the additional spikes and Richard was absorbed with a final checkout of his mobile camera, Nicole and Eponine strolled around the platform. “How’s it going, farmer?” Eponine said to Max on the radio.

“Fine so far,” he replied. “But we’re only about ten meters below you. These spikes are not as close together as the ones above, so we’re being more cautious.”

“Your relationship with Max must have really blossomed while I was in prison,” Nicole commented a few moments later.

“Yes, it did,” Eponine replied easily. “Quite frankly, it surprised me. I didn’t think a man was capable of having a serious affair with someone who… you know… but I underestimated Max. He is really an unusual person. Underneath that brusque, macho exterior…”

Eponine stopped. Nicole was smiling broadly. “I don’t think Max really fools anybody-at least not those who know him. The tough, foul-mouthed Max is an act, developed for some reason, probably self-protection, back on that farm in Arkansas.”

The two women were silent for several seconds. “But I don’t think I have ever given him full credit either,” Nicole added. “It is a tribute to him that he adores you so completely even though you two have never been able to really—”

“Oh, Nicole,” Eponine said, suddenly emotional. “Don’t think I haven’t wanted to, haven’t dreamed about it. And Dr. Turner has told us many times that the odds are very small that Max would contract RV-41 if we used protection. But ‘very small’ is not good enough for me. What if somehow, some way, I passed to Max this horrible scourge that is killing me? How could I ever forgive myself for condemning the man I love to death?”

Tears filled Eponine’s eyes. “We are intimate, of course,” she said. “In our own safe way… And Max has never

once complained. But I can tell from his eyes that he misses—”

“All right, now,” they heard Max say on the radio. “We can see the bottom. It looks like a normal floor, maybe five more meters below us. There are two tunnels leading away, one the size of the smaller tunnel up at your level, and another that is really tiny. We’re going on down for a closer inspection.”

The time had come for the explorers to enter the subway. Richard’s mobile camera had not found anything substantively new and there was definitely no exit the humans could use on the only level below them in the lair. Richard and Patrick finished a private conversation in which they reviewed, in detail, what the young man was going to do when he returned to the others. Then they rejoined Max, Nicole, and Eponine, and the five of them walked slowly around the platform to the waiting subway.

Eponine had butterflies in her stomach. She remembered a similar feeling, when she was fourteen, just before her first one-woman art exhibit opened at her orphanage in Limoges. She took a deep breath.

“I don’t mind saying it,” Eponine said. “I’m scared.”

“Shit,” said Max, “that’s an understatement… Say, Richard, how do we know this thing is not going to hurtle over that cliff you told us about, with us inside?”

Richard smiled but didn’t reply. They reached the side of the subway. “All right,” he said, “since we don’t know exactly how this thing is activated, we want to be very careful. We will all enter more or less simultaneously. That will preclude the possibility that the doors will close and the subway will take off when we are not all yet on board.”

Nobody said anything for almost a minute. They lined up four abreast, Max and Eponine on the side closest to the tunnel. “Now I’m going to count,” Richard said. “When I say three, we’ll all step on together.”

“May I close my eyes?” Max asked with a grin. “That made it easier for me on roller coasters when I was a little boy.”

“If you like,” Nicole answered.

They stepped into the subway and each of them grabbed a vertical rod. Nothing happened. Patrick stood staring at them on the other side of the open door. “Maybe it’s waiting for Patrick,” Richard said quietly.

“I don’t know,” Max mumbled, “but if this fucking train doesn’t move in a few seconds, I’m going to jump off.”

The door closed slowly only moments after Max’s comment. There was time for two breaths each before the subway lurched into motion, accelerating rapidly into the illuminated tunnel.

Patrick waved and followed the subway with his eyes until it disappeared around the first corner. Then he put his rifle on his shoulder and began climbing up the spikes. Please come back quickly, he was thinking, before the uncertainty becomes too much for all of us.

He returned to their living level in less than fifteen minutes. After taking a short drink from his water bottle, he hurried down the tunnel to the museum. While he was walking, he was thinking about what he was going to say to everybody.

Patrick did not even notice that the room was dark when he crossed the threshold. When he entered, however, and the lights came on, he was momentarily disoriented. I’m not in the right place, he thought first. I have taken the wrong tunnel. But no, his jumbled mind now said, as he glanced quickly around the room, this must be the room after all. I see a couple of feathers over there in the corner, and one of Nikki ‘s funny diapers…

With each passing second his heart beat faster. Where are they? Patrick said to himself, his eyes now darting frantically around the room for a second time. What could have happened to them? The longer he stared at the empty walls, carefully recalling all the conversation before he had departed, the more Patrick realized that his sister and friends could not possibly have left of their own volition. Unless there was a note! Patrick spent two minutes searching every nook in the room. There were no messages. So someone, or something, must have forced them to leave, he thought.

Patrick tried to think rationally, but it was impossible. His mind kept jumping back and forth between what he ought to do and terrible pictures of what might have happened to the others. At length he concluded that perhaps they had all moved back to the original room, the one his mother and Richard called the photo gallery, maybe because the lights in the museum were malfunctioning or for some other equally trivial reason. Buoyed by this thought, Patrick dashed out into the tunnel.

He reached the photo gallery three minutes later. It was also empty. Patrick sat down against the wall. There were only two directions his companions could have taken. Since Patrick had not seen anyone on his climb, the others must have gone toward the cathedral room and the sealed exit. As he walked down the long corridor, his hand tight around the rifle, Patrick convinced himself that the Nakamura troops had not left the island and that they had somehow broken into the lair and captured everybody else.

Just before he entered the cathedral room, Patrick heard Nikki crying. “Mom-my, Mom-my,” she screamed, and then let out a mournful wail. Patrick charged into the large room, not seeing anybody, and then turned up the ramp in the direction of his niece’s cry.

On the landing beneath the still-sealed exit was a chaotic scene. In addition to Nikki’s continued wailing, Robert Turner was walking around in a daze, his arms outstretched and his eyes upward, repeating over and over, “No, God, no.” Benjy was quietly sobbing in a corner while Nai was trying, without much success, to comfort her twin sons.

When Nai saw Patrick, she jumped up and ran toward him. “Oh, Patrick,” she said, tears running from her eyes, “Ellie has been kidnapped by the octospiders.”